Welcome, one and all, to Day 3 of Hate Week, where I go off on the changing nature of the fan experience, and its consequences for the greater society.

Today’s thread is brought to you by Metallica, because fuck yeah!

Also, here’s a special “hello” to all the Jeffrey Epstein & Traci Lords weirdos the algorithm drew yesterday because I mentioned the age of consent in the header.

Where it was

If memory serves

The Seahawks games I remember as a kid were magical AFC West donnybrooks. 

• The Stabler & Plunkett Raiders. 
• The Air Coryell Chargers
• The Craig Morton / early Elway Broncos
• The Chiefs sucked

The Seahawks of my youth had Steve Largent, Dave Krieg, OG Curt Warner, and Kenny Easley (among others). As a Canadian kid in the era of rooftop antennas, games were available only if the weather conditions were right. CBS had the NFC, NBC had the AFC, and ABC had Howard & the boys for Monday Night Football.

I was 8 when the Seahawks came into the league, and 12 when I saw my first game live, in this magical mausoleum down along the waterfront.

Built where there’d once been a thriving prostitution community, the Kingdome served as the home for both the Mariners & Seahawks for about 20 years. It did the job of winning the city the franchises, but my-God was it an awful place to watch a game. Don’t get me wrong, it was a hell of a home-field advantage. That place could get LOUD. But in terms of the game-attending experience it was the worst. Low-sloped sightlines, so there was always a head in the way – especially for a young child. Shit-assed concessions that only really consisted of popcorn, hotdogs, RC Cola, and Olympia draft beer meant you’d best eat before going in. (Hat tip to ye olde FX McRory’s.) The bathrooms were a trough & stall experience that more suited a paddock or kennel than a human-used facility.

Then came the modernization craze. It all started in 1992 with Camden Yards in Baltimore, which marked the death-knell for the multi-purpose community-owned stadiums a lot of teams played in. Even though Memorial Stadium hadn’t had a football game played there since 1984, the stadium hadn’t been improved for the remaining tenant, which impacted the fan experience. It was also what people referred to as a “suburban doughnut” – a big round bowl outside the downtown core where convenience rather than esthetics dictated the fan experience. This one act – building a single-purpose/tenant facility – spurred the divorce between football and baseball, and led to the modern edifices we see today. The promise of such a football facility is what led Art Modell to leave Cleveland for Baltimore in 1996, getting M&T Bank Stadium completed by 1998.

In Seattle, this led to the demise of the Kingdome and the creation of two (admittedly gorgeous) facilities in Safeco/T-Mobile Field and CenturyLink (C-Link)/Lumen (same company) Field.

I’ve spent far more time at Lumen, but I can say both places have great game atmosphere. And at least the neighborhood remained after the rebuilds. Seattle doesn’t have much of a tailgating culture, so it was supplemented by a vibrant pre-game bar culture.

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Where it is

The big thing now is that all the owners want the same stadium:

• Covered
• PSLs
• Single tenant
• Government paid

Last year, I went to SoFi for a Rams game. As a destination, the place is fucking fantastic.

As a “fan experience”, it’s terrible. The massive parking lot is great for tailgating, but there are no bars or restaurants nearby. They are finally getting a hotel & entertainment district, courtesy of their hospitality and entertainment partner The Marriott Corporation, who will have exclusive rights to provide such services at the SoFi site. I’m sure they’ll have affordability front of mind when building out their complex. Beyond that, there’s a Target complex “across the lot” and a Costco “three blocks” away, but each of those blocks is a quarter-mile, which is finally too great a distance for a $1.50 to mean something.

[By the way, the hot dog is also $1.50 in Canada. At today’s exchange rate that’s $1.10 in USD. That’s like a free Canadian hot dog every fourth visit. It’s like they’re paying me to eat.]

My guess is that there’s about 30,000 fans who have their tickets to actually go to the games. The rest are amateur ticket scalpers whom Ticketmaster and the PSL fee has emboldened. 

Look at this bullshit – $200,000 for the right to a seat rental?! Even in the nosebleeds it’s between $1-5 K before you even pay for the seats. Sure, it’s a one-time fee, but each time someone drops out they can charge it again. When I went to a game last year – Rams vs. Packers – I paid $250 each for a seat in the 530s. Dude clearly got his money’s worth out of me. That’s why a Rams “home game” has quotes around it. Because unless it’s an actual dogshit team that no one would travel for, half the fans in attendance are supporting the opponent. 

Don’t believe me? Look at their 2026 “Home” opponent list:

This is a fucking Dream Team of visiting teams for the scalper community. They’ll be able to charge maximum rates to every sucker willing to fly Southwest into LAX for the day. My guess is that Melbourne game will be the Chargers, because it means rent-boy Dean Spanos has to go on the road to save the Rams a few bucks, but will still have to pay for all eight of his home dates.

The one thing I will give Enos credit for is the fact that he built & paid for the whole thing himself. One look at this chart

will show you that he put his wife’s Walmart money to good use. The big shiny building is just to get the fans in the door; much like with concerts, the revenue is in the ticket price and the merch.

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Where is this all going?

Well, the future of the “fan experience” is the ability to watch the event without being impacted by the weather. The movement is well underway:

Today, 11 teams play in 10 stadiums that are covered. But six outdoor teams have announced fully financed plans to shift into the enclosed column: Tennessee (2027), Jacksonville (2028), Cleveland (2029), Washington (2030) and Denver and K.C. (2031). By 2031, covered stadiums [in the NFL] will outnumber open-air stadiums.

By 2032, for example, if projections are accurate, the AFC West will be all indoors – and it’s all a business decision, not a fan-driven decision. The article quoted above describes in great detail the advantages to domes for NFL teams outside of their own events. Greater access to additional opportunities await; never mind the opportunity to finally host a Super Bowl in Denver or Kansas City-ish, the draw of Finals Four, concert residencies, and other large-draw events will always be the driver of such decision-making, not the vaunted “fan experience”.

The only real question is, who will pay for it? According to all the studies, the taxpayer. Stadium funding is predicated on two things: the ability of the owner to pay for it themselves, or the willingness of local government to fund their biggest donors in craven attempts to maintain civic popularity. And even if the stadium is privately financed, there are usually civic concessions which make that outlay far cheaper than it should have been.

Stan Kroenke, for all his awfulness, turned his awful riches into an awesome stadium by getting a sweetheart deal to purchase the Hollywood Park site that was originally going to be the Raiders home in the late1990s before the league quashed it, ‘forcing’ Davis to ‘permanently’ move back to Oakland. The site was eventually sold to make way for a Walmart supercenter & distribution hub, but that changed after Enos bought the Rams & had a dinner conversation with his wife about a new playhouse. A few sweetheart concessions from the Inglewood City Council to sidestep environmental reviews of noise, traffic and air pollution was all it took for one of LA’s largest real estate transactions in decades to pass within a few months and with minimal public input.

The publicly financed stadium is the far worse way to go, but seems to be the one the average fan yearns for. It must be because they will never be that rich to care, so all they want is their local sports team to give them some comfort. Since they already finished public school, they’re not that concerned with what happens to the next generation as long as they get to celebrate a championship.

In Las Vegas, for example, the two stadiums will end up receiving, after construction completes on the Athletics stadium, more than $1.1 billion in public funding, not counting future tax breaks. According to the same Atlantic article, taxpayers have spent nearly $30 billion on stadiums over the past 34 years, not counting property-tax exemptions or federal revenues lost to tax-exempt municipal bonds. Yet the governments get no benefit from the rise in valuation of those teams. In effect, as evidenced by America’s current kleptocracy, the state is making certain citizens rich as the expense of the population whose services are affected by that revenue diversion.

According to a study by the Independent Institute, Tennessee has by-far the (currently) worst public revenue costs of any NFL stadium construction:

The Tennessee Titans are in the midst of construction on a new stadium and taxpayers are on the hook for an astounding $2.3 billion. Due to the long-term repayment structure of the bonds—spanning at least 20 years—taxpayers will face approximately $1.1 billion in interest costs as part of the nearly $2.3 billion total public expenditure. Much like the Bengals, the Titans’ franchise value has seen rapid growth, $6.3 billion this year, up from $4.9 billion in 2024. Amy Adams Strunk, owner of the franchise, has an estimated net worth of $2 billion.

But it could soon be passed by the Chiefs deal with the state of Kansas, which has such a hard-on to steal the Chiefs from Missouri that they may have brokered a deal that’s considered the worst public-financing arrangement since the Montreal Olympics.

This, if nothing else, should Romanov the entire ownership class of the NFL.

Tonight’s sports:

• NHL: penultimate night before the Olympic break
  • Habs at Jets – 7:00pm | Sportsnet
  • Bruins at Panthers – 7:00pm | TNT
  • Oilers at Flames – 10:00pm | Sportsnet
  • Leafs at Lightning – 10:30pm | TNT / TSN regional
• NBA:
  • Nuggets at Knicks – 7:00pm | ESPN / Sportsnet1
  • T-wolves at Raptors – 7:30pm | TSN
  • Vichy Sonics at Spurs – 9:30pm | ESPN / Sportsnet1
• NCAA:
  • Men’s:
    • Notre Dame at Louisville – 7:00pm | ESPN2
    • Oklahoma at Kentucky – 9:00pm | ESPN2

Go forth and Komment, for the Hate concludes tomorrow.